Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters (The Katherine of Aragon Story Book 1) (9 page)

Habits are first cobwebs, then cables
~ Castilian proverb

Sweet Francisco,

I thank you for your letter explaining your absence from the camp. How like you to not send another to search for gunpowder supplies – and how wise are you to not trust this task to another. Your work is dangerous enough without you chancing your life on ingredients of inferior quality.

Here at the camp we grow more impatient day-by-day for the king’s summons telling us that Granada is at last conquered. While the days are slow, their pattern remain the same: Matins, morning meditation, state business. The queen often attends to this abed – her strength diminishes daily and is not what I desire to see…

“W
ho will care for you as I do when you cannot sleep and work throughout the night?” Josepha had asked the queen before leaving her service. The queen’s sleepless, too often pain-fraught, nights distressed Beatriz, her children and all those loving her, and for good cause. Most days Queen Isabel ruled her kingdom with no more than four hours sleep, sometimes less. But an arduous day ruling rarely caused her to neglect her other roles. By late afternoon, when the worst of the heat had passed, she allowed time to attend to her duties as wife and mother. She wove fine linen to make her husband’s shirts, setting her daughters and her women also to this task. While they wove and sewed, she instructed her daughters on the word of God and lessons in statecraft. Listening to her lessons on ruling, Beatriz’s pity grew for the queen’s daughters.
Thank God I am a teacher and not born into royalty. Life is hard enough without that.

Catalina listened to her mother with great devotion. Day-by-day she learnt from her an example of patience and hard work, an example that never wavered despite her mother’s increasing ill-health. Every evening night fell to the ringing of bells that called to Angelus when the queen chanted the much-loved prayer, “The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary: And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.”

Her three young daughters responded in unison with the next part of the prayer, leading in the other women. Beatriz saw Catalina drinking in her mother’s closing words: “Behold the handmaid of the lord: Be it done unto me according to Thy word. Hail Mary…”

These daily rituals of the church seemed to serve yet another purpose. The queen stamped upon herself and her daughters the conviction that, through their royal birth, they were God’s handmaidens, committed to serve God through the ruling of Earthly kingdoms. That God placed them thus allowed them no other choice.

···

June brought with it not only the hottest days of an unrelenting summer, but also their long-awaited summons. The queen and her court re-joined the king at Gozco, camping closer but still at a safe distance from the battlefield. There, the court watched victory ripen like the pomegranate itself in summer, and see it fall – fall, luscious and red, bursting with its jewelled seeds ready to eat, seeds of death and life, into Queen Isabel’s waiting palm.

While soldiers readied the queen’s encampment again, Beatriz looked over at the near hill, blinking against a noon sun, inhaling and exhaling air so hot it seemed to scorch her lungs. On the apex of the hill, King Ferdinand’s splendid tent commanded the highest view, overlooking the combined armies of Aragon and Castilla and the red walls of their ancient enemies.

Beatriz turned her head, rooted to where she stood, hearing the loud flap of canvas. Strong winds billowed out the huge banners of Santiago, Castilla, and Aragon into confusion. Set before them, shards of cutting sunlight broke against the ornate, silver standard of a fourth banner. The holy banner of the crusader’s cross flapped and whipped uncontrolled against the banners of the two kingdoms. All the banners seemed engaging in battle for supremacy when Hernando de Talavera, the queen’s confessor, emerged from the king’s tent into the strong wind. Windblown, his body bowed before the wind, his face ageless in its austerity, his long, white robes joined the flap and billow of the banners.

···

Another dawn broke, awaking Beatriz to the hand-bells of priests, calling the faithful to prayer, intertwined with the call of prayer in the citadel of the Moors, a song like a cry echoing down to the queen’s encampment. Every day the call competed with the Christian bells. Christian and Moor mirrored one another in their worship of God.

Each morning, the earth trembled as horses passed their tent, signalling the start of a new day for the queen’s cavalry in the field. Battle-drums and war-cries became a normal part of Beatriz’s life. The screams of the wounded and dying from nearby tents pierced her dreams, awaking her, bathed in sweat.

One night she opened her eyes, shaking with the remnants of nightmare, fighting to regain the solid ground of reality. Outside, men laughed, fought and sang drunkenly. A chorus of countless cats screeched, as if twirled around and around by their tails. “Santa Maria, what’s that?” she asked in fright.

Their night candle doused some time while she slept, the tent’s inky blackness left her dislocated and confused, and still enmeshed in the web of her foreboding dream. She started, hearing the exasperated voice of one of the queen’s ladies. “It’s the bagpipes, Beatriz. Those English devils run amok again. Every night they feast and drink, making so much noise I cannot sleep.”

Hearing the unholy scream of bagpipes begin again, Beatriz remembered her nightmare, and remembered the terror that had birthed it.

Only the day before bright sunlight had slanted upon Queen Isabel’s stout form, glittering the gold in her gown with every movement. From the safety of the highest house in the village of Las Zubias, eyes burning with zeal, the queen stood at the un-shuttered window of a chamber on the upper storey, watching the brave and noble Cádiz routing the Moors to savage defeat on the plains of Granada. Close to his royal mother, his three young sisters and little Maria, Prince Juan pointed out the king coming to the duke’s aid.

Maria’s father, Martin de Salinas, recovering from a head blow and forbidden the field this day by both physician and the queen’s command, kept his royal kinswoman company. Overlooking the battle as if a bullfight, he explained the battle manoeuvres, and their strange dance between life and death.

Steel clashed and sparked against steel, man clashed and sparred against man, sword-to-sword, dagger-to-dagger. The wind carried the screech of metal, often followed by the shriek of death. Red dust billowed and swirled, spreading through the air a thick, undulating curtain, veiling warrior and horse from one another, causing a state of confusion, disaster and more violent death.

Galloping horses drummed a rhythm to the sway of war. Manes whipped by speed and wind, some steeds crashed to the earth, their bellies torn apart by spear poles fixed into the ground.

Death whined for prey in the high-pitched wind. Again and again, clouds of black arrows soared, arching into the sky, marking many with death, and maiming just as many.

Not wanting to watch, Beatriz gazed around for water. Her lips and mouth dry, a poem drummed continually in her head – a poem of a great leader, a leader once both Vizier and Nagid of Granada, a man who dared challenge the glory of war. Years ago her father, proud to trace his lineage to him, had read his poems to her from a precious volume handed down the generations from eldest son to eldest son. Now one of its poems came back to haunt her:

The horses lunged back and forth like vipers darting out of their
nest.

The hurled spears were like bolts of lightning, filling the air with
light.
Arrows pelted us like raindrops, as if our shields were
sieves.
Their strung bows were like serpents, each serpent spewing forth a stinging
bee.
Their swords above their heads were like glowing torches, which darken as they
fall.

Still, my gallant men scorned their lives,
Preferring
death.
These young lions welcomed each raw wound upon their
heads
as though it were a
garland.
To die – they believed – was to keep the
faith;
to live – they thought – was
forbidden.

Garland on a battlefield? Beatriz saw none here. A man screamed foreign words that meant nothing to her, but she understood his terror, his agony, his desire for life. Martin de Salinas pointed to men garbed in English colours. “They call for Saint George!”

“Mother! See the English archers find their target!” Prince Juan spoke in awe.

The crackle of gunfire, followed by tell-tale wisps of blue smoke, intermingled with the scream of man and horse. Even from this safe distance, Beatriz just desired to cower, seeing one man smote by an arrow straight into his eye.

Tall like his countrymen, an English soldier hacked down a terrified Moor with his battle-axe. From their vantage point, the Moor looked to Beatriz just a boy, no more than fourteen. The axe left him broken and bleeding upon the earth. His assailant swung his axe again, down on the boy’s neck, before rushing further into the heat of battle. A wing of Castilian cavalry swept over the slender body, trampling it under-hoof. When the tide of horses swept by, it left nothing of the Moor but a sack of bones, gore and blood.

“Ahmed,” Beatriz whispered. It could have been Ahmed trampled to a bloody death. She swallowed back bile. For his own safety the prince remained some distance away until his father finally admitted defeat.

“Oftentimes they’re slow to engage, my queen,” De Salinas said, “but in full battle the English show their true worth. Your Grace, good soldiers to have on our side.”

Thoughtfully, De Salinas fingered his chin before dropping his hand back to his side. The tips of his long fingers possessed calluses from his lute and guitar. Beatriz found herself staring at them.
Why did men make music as easily as taking up a
sword?

De Salinas cocked his head, looking aside at Prince Juan. “My prince, did you know the English believe themselves the most perfect race placed upon the good Earth? The English think themselves better than not only the Moors, but also our men. Indeed, they proclaimed their lord commander better than any grandee. My soldiers little desire their fellowship.”

The prince chortled, his laughter ringing strange to Beatriz’s ears. He leaned out the window, watching his father engage in combat. “Do they, cousin?” The smile masking his lower face failed in its journey to his humourless blue eyes. He suddenly seemed so much older than his years. “As long as they fight for us with courage, I won’t tell them any different.”

“But,” De Salinas continued, “civil wars in their barbarous country have given these men a taste for blood and battle. The English wield both sword and battle-axe with great might, refusing to give ground even when defeat stares them in the face. They’re good, staunch comrades in arms, as long as they remember to try not to outdo our men in their wish to keep all the glory to themselves.”

Beatriz’s stomach churned, its hollowness leaving her both dizzy and ready to vomit. Racked by the awful torture of watching men and boys kill one another, she wiped her sweaty hands on her gown, her mouth simmering to desiccation with each quickened breath. She stepped farther away from the royal family.
Please God, pray let this soon be
over.

Swallowing back bile, Beatriz opened her eyes again to the battle. She no longer had a sense of foe or friend or Englishmen. All she saw was a mass of humanity coming together, and then coming away lessened. Men and beasts littered the field – the dead alongside the wounded and the dying.

Countless ravens gathered in the battlefield, fluttering in short, considered flight, picking at unclaimed bodies where men no longer fought. Drawn back and gone, the tide of war took its deluge of blood to soak elsewhere. The harsh, uncaring, grating caws of raven interwove with the screams of men and beast.

Raven eyes – jet-jewelled and cold – burst into Beatriz’s mind and took hold of her scattered wits. No matter how hard she tried to banish them away, the vision lingered, becoming more substantial with every breath she took.

Her breathing quickening again, she took another step away from the royal family, trying to banish her vision. Its cruel form haunted her without mercy. The ravens became as if tailed demons – black like ebony, glistening with a greenish slime, their eyes now red, burning embers withering her soul. They seemed to stand all around, taunting, stalking her as if in a game of cat and mouse.

Beatriz crossed herself and prayed. She looked towards the window – a window revealing not only the bright summer’s day and hazy blue hills, but the black emptiness of bloody, violent death.

She turned away from the increasing carnage, her hands no longer palm-to-palm in prayer, but knotted together across her chest – gripped tight enough to hurt. She could no longer thread together the reason, the need, the purpose for this battlefield.

Beatriz owned the queen an intelligent woman, but her utter concentration on this battle only confused her. The queen’s dislike of the dance of death between bull and man was known to all those close to her. It was yet another reason to love the woman ruling Castilla with such an iron grip.
Why, then, bring children here to watch this?
This battle seemed as senseless as the bullfights where men tormented dumb animals to their deaths.

She remembered the years she spent as a child in the convent, when she took mice away from the kitchen cats despite the disapproval of the nuns. She had yearned to ask them: “Why kill just for the sake of killing?”

She was of the blood of El Cid and a long line of warriors. Her ancestor Samuel Ibn Nagrela traced his descent from the house of the warrior King David, the same house that saw the birth of the Lord Jesus. Fed a feast in childhood of crusade stories, hundreds of years of battles won and lost, she had realised early in her life that war was no game.